La part du romanesque dans l’hétéro-autobiographie de Robbe-Grillet

In the light of the recent, lively critical debate on the “Romanesque”, I have considered the ideas Robbe-Grillet has expressed in his criticism and fiction in order to clarify the meaning it has for him and the role it plays in his Romanesques. I have examined Pour un nouveau roman, Le Voyageur, his latest collection, and the Correspondance, following the development of an idea which, subsequently, I compared to the Romanesques. I found out that for Robbe-Grillet the romanesque adds an essential ingredient to the strength of passion, in both life and fiction: simulation. Only a disproportionate representation, which is obviously false, can approach the intensity of the “fantasme” understood in the Freudian sense. Fictionalizing his autobiography allowed him, also, to represent himself in the act of writing, in his specific function of inventor of stories, thus abstracting his work from the problem of reality and fiction which autobiography inevitably implies.